I warned many about the coming crisis, long before it happened, on many occasions and in many places, even at the World Bank. They did not want to listen and that´s ok, it usually happens, but what is not ok, is that they still do not seem to want to hear it. “We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.” (Plato: 427 BC – 347 BC)

Sunday, August 30, 2015

A friend told me I had to read Mark R. Levin´s “Plunder and Deceit”, and when I saw it was subtitled “Big governments exploitation of young people and the future” I immediately ordered a copy.

And in its first chapter I read about the intergenerational continuum of the past, the living and the unborn… and I knew the author and I, at least in this respect, shared very similar concerns.

And just looking through the index, I knew I had to add a chapter to this book titled: “God make us daring!”

Why? Because the most important driving force on the intergenerational continuum is the willingness of those of us here now, to take the risks needed today in order for the tomorrows of our descendants to be brighter and brighter.

But, unfortunately, tragically, our most important societal financiers of risk-taking, the banks, have been instructed not to attend to the credit needs of The Risky, but to keep financing solely The Safe. How come?

Regulators imposed capital requirements on banks that are much higher for what is perceived a risky, from a credit risk point of view, than for what is perceived as safe. That allows banks to leverage their equity and the support these receive from the society much more when lending to The Safe than when lending to The Risky. And that of course allows banks to earn much higher risk adjusted returns on equity when lending to The Safe, than when lending to The Risky.

And so regulators have impeded the fair access to bank credit of those perceived as risky, like SMEs and entrepreneurs, and therefore banks are no longer helping out financing the future of our young people, they are only refinancing the past.

And, to top it up, with that so amazingly unnoticed historical event of the Basel Accord of 1988, regulators decided the risk-weight for sovereigns was zero percent, while the risk-weight of citizen 100 percent. And with that these statist/communists de facto made our banks to operate under the assumption that government bureaucrats use bank credit more efficiently than the private sector.

And the credit-risk-aversion and pro-government bias introduced in our bank regulations, has our western civilization going down and down

In April 2013 the Washington Post published the following letter I wrote:

“It suffices to remember the saying about “a banker being that chap who lends you the umbrella when the sun shines but wants it back as soon as it looks like it is going to rain” to know that those assets perceived as safe are already much favored over those perceived as risky. The risk weights applied by the Basel regulations and based on exactly those same perceived risks only increase the gap between “The Infallible” and “The Risky.”

And that is why I very much salute the bill by Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and David Vitter (R-La.) that looks to “require more capital and better capital but also limit the ‘risk-weighting’ of assets.” More capital is a perfectly legitimate requirement, but the imposition of risk weights is fundamentally incompatible with “a land of the brave.” The United States did not become what it is by avoiding risks.”

Unfortunately, in the Home of the Brave, the interests of bankers making their dreams of very high returns with very little risks come true, seems to trump the needs of its younger.

America: Why do you saddle your young and brightest with huge education loans, if you’re not willing to allow banks financing those who might generate the jobs your young need in order to service that debt?

US Congressmen and Governors: How come you allow your banks to hold less capital when financing sovereigns and members of the AAArisktocracy, than when financing your own small unrated local businesses?

out to a world where many risks await us.As one with your world, you want us to live.God make us daring!”

PS. And all this risk adverse and pro-sovereign regulations for nothing! Major bank crisis do not result from excessive exposures to what was perceived as risky, these always result, no exceptions, from excessive exposures to what was erroneously perceived as very safe. Just look at the AAA rated securities backed with mortgages to the subprime sector... and Greece.

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Why don't bank regulators get it?

The less the perceived risk of default is, and the higher the leverage allowed, the greater the systemic risk.

My huge problem!

Q. "If Kurowski is right, why are his arguments so ignored? A. If I had argued that the regulators were 5 to 10 degrees wrong, I would be recognized, but since I am arguing they are 150 to 180 degrees wrong, I must be ignored.

The deafening noise of the Agendas

The fundamental reasons why it is so hard to advance the otherwise so easy explainable truth of this financial crisis, is because of the deafening noise of the Agendas…

On one side, we have the "progressives" who want to put all the blame on capitalistic banksters, and, on the other, the "conservatives" who want to blame the socialistic government sponsored enterprises GSEs of Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac.

For any of both sides accepting the fact that it was mostly a regulatory failure of monstrous proportions would seemingly be a highly inconvenient truth that would not help them to advance their respective agendas.

You tell me!

What is more dangerous in a systemic way, that which is perceived as risky or that which is perceived as not risky? Right!

How can the Basel Committee be so dumb?

Systemic risks is about something that can become as big so as to threaten the system… and our bank regulators in the Basel Committee are incapable or unwilling to understand that what has the largest possibilities of growing as big so as to threaten the system is what is perceived as having little or no risk, not what is perceived as risky… which makes their first and really only pillar of their regulations, that of capital requirements of banks that are lower when perceived risks are lower… so utterly dumb!

We must stop our gullible and naive financial regulators from believing in never-risk-land.

The stuff that bonuses are made of

Whenever a credit rating corresponds exactly to real underlying risk neither borrower nor lender loses but the intermediary cannot make profits… it is only when the credit ratings are too high or too low that those margins that can generate that profitable stuff that bonuses are paid for exist.

What were they thinking?

The default of a debtor is about the most common, natural and even benign risk in capitalism, so it is so hard to really get a grip on what was going around in the minds of the regulators when they decided to construe capital requirements for banks based exclusively on discriminating against that risk as it was perceived by some credit rating agencies.

Day by the day it is becoming more relevant... scary!

This I published in November 1999... Read it!

The possible Big Bang that scares me the most is the one that could happen the day those genius bank regulators in Basel, playing Gods, manage to introduce a systemic error in the financial system, which will cause the collapse of the OWB (the only bank in the world) or of the last financial dinosaur that survives at that moment.

Currently market forces favors the larger the entity is, be it banks, law firms, auditing firms, brokers, etc. Perhaps one of the things that the authorities could do, in order to diversify risks, is to create a tax on size.”

This I wrote, October 2004, as an Executive Director of the World Bank

We believe that much of the world’s financial markets are currently being dangerously overstretched through an exaggerated reliance on intrinsically weak financial models that are based on very short series of statistical evidence and very doubtful volatility assumptions.

Regulatory hubris

In a world with so many different risks, some naïve gullible and outright stupid regulators thought everything would be fine and dandy if they just had some few credit rating agencies determine default risks and then gave the banks great incentives, by means of different capital requirements, to follow those credit risk opinions.

On bs.

When experts bs..t the world that’s bad news, but when experts allowed themselves to be bs..ted by bs..ing experts that’s is when the world goes really bad.

My most current proposal on the regulatory reform for banks

Fire the teachers!

They were supposed to teach the world prudent risk-taking and instead they taught it imprudent risk-aversion.

The deal!

This was the deal! If you convinced risky and broke Joe to take a $300.000 mortgage at 11 percent for 30 years and then, with more than a little help from the credit rating agencies, you could convince risk-adverse Fred that this mortgage, repackaged in a securitized version, and rated AAA, was so safe that a six percent return was quite adequate, then you could sell Fred the mortgage for $510.000. This would allow you and your partners in the set-up, to pocket a tidy profit of $210.000

Calling it quits?

A world that taxes risk-taking and subsidizes risk adverseness is a world that seems to want to lie down and die

Let´s neutralize the wimps!

If we are to keep on using Basel methodology for establishing the minimum capital requirements for banks, beside better risk weights, we must demand it also uses “societal purpose” weights.

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Silly bank regulators!

What other word could describe a bank regulatory system designed exclusively to avoid bank crisis as if that is the only purpose of banking. You might just as well order the kids to stay in bed all life so as to diminish the risk of them tripping.

The minimum capital requirements of Basel that are based on default risks as measured by the credit rating agency amount to a dangerous tax on the risk, the oxygen of development.

Blindly focusing on default and leaving out any consideration that a credit with a low default risk but for a totally useless or perhaps even an environmentally dangerous purpose is much more risky for the society than a credit with a higher default risk destined to trying to help create decent jobs or diminish an environmental threat, is just silly.

But do I have to be disrespectful and call them silly? Well, individually perhaps they are not, but, as a group, bank regulators are so full of hot air that someone has to help them to puncture their cocoon balloon and let them out.

Breathe!

I’m going to third-pillar what?

By now the desperate bank regulators are throwing at us the third pillar of their Basel regulations which implies the need that we ourselves privately monitor our banks. Great, in my country, a couple of decades ago, I did just that and had a fairly good grip on whom of my banker neighbors were good bankers and whom to look out for.

But sincerely what am I supposed to do know when about 50 per cent of the retail deposits in my country are in hand of international banks (Spain) and that might be losing their shirt making investments in subprime mortgages in California?

Tragedy!

It is very sad when a developed nation decides making risk-adverseness the primary goal of their banking system and places itself voluntarily on the way down but it is a real tragedy when developing countries copycats it and fall into the trap of calling it quits.

Development rating agencies?

A bank should be more than a mattress!

When considering the role of the commercial banks should not the developing countries use development rating agencies instead of credit rating agencies?

Clearly more important than defending what we have is defending what we want to have.

What do we want from our banks?

Over the last two decades we have seen hundreds if not thousands of research papers, seminars, workshops conferences analyzing how to exorcize the risks out of banking; and if in that sense the bank regulation coming out from Basel was doing its job; and centred around words like soundness, stability, solvency, safeness and other synonyms. Not one of them discussed how the commercial banks were performing their other two traditional functions, namely to help to generate that economic growth that leads to the creation of decent jobs and the distribution of the financial resources into the hands of those capable of doing the most with it.

At this moment when we are suddenly faced with the possibilities that all the bank regulator’s risk adverseness might anyhow have come to naught, before digging deeper in the hole where we find ourselves fighting the risks, is it not time to take a step back and discuss again what it is we really want our commercial banks to do for us? I mean, if it is only to act as a safe mattress for our retail deposits then it would seem that could be taken cared of by authorizing them only to lend to the lender of last resort; but which of course would leave us with what to do about the growth and the distribution of opportunities.

About Me

We are suffering from more and more answers than questions begging for them, and so I work on the latter.
Read it all in my one and only book!"Voice and Noise"
Pssst... so few have read this book so it is slowly turning into a collector item (I do not say a "cult"... yet) and so you might benefit from getting your very own copy now.